History of cannabis in Colombia
More actions
The history of cannabis in Colombia runs from the Spanish Crown's inquiries of the 1620s about growing hemp for ship's rope to a licensed medical-cannabis industry in the 2020s. In the 19th century cannabis was sold as an imported medicine. Port workers and the urban poor smoked marijuana under the prohibition that began in 1939. In the 1970s it was grown on a large scale in the north of the country for export to the United States, and the government answered with a military campaign from 1978 and aerial spraying from 1984. Growing for the home market followed, above all in the Andean departments of the south-west and in northern Cauca.[1]: 207–209[2]: 16[3]: 162
Growing for export began on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in the early 1970s, during the trade Colombians call the bonanza marimbera, and moved in the 1980s to the Serranía del Perijá.[4]: 166[5]: 10–11 Law 30 of 1986 is the national narcotics statute.[6] Carrying a personal dose has not been a crime since a ruling of the Constitutional Court in 1994, and since 2015 the state has licensed the growing of cannabis for medical and scientific use.[7][8]
Hemp sought under Spanish rule (1600s–1780s)
The Spanish Crown wanted hemp (cáñamo) from its American possessions for ship's rigging. A royal order (cédula) of 23 April 1626 told the viceroy of Peru, and by identical orders the president of the New Kingdom of Granada and the governors of Santa Marta, Popayán and Cartagena, to report which lands could grow hemp and make cordage, at what cost, and whether anyone there knew the work; the Crown was buying foreign cordage with silver.[9] Juan de Borja, president of the Audiencia of Santa Fe, replied on 30 June 1627 that the temperate valleys of the kingdom could grow the plant, but that he had found neither seed nor anyone who knew the crop, and he asked Spain for both seed and instructions. When the Council of the Indies read his letter in 1628 it consulted Alonso Turrillo, treasurer of the Santa Fe mint, who proposed a trial crop at Guaduas, near a landing on the Magdalena from which the fibre could go down the river to Cartagena.[10]
Descriptions of the highland towns written in the same years report no hemp. At Tunja in 1610 "Cáñamo no se coge ninguno, ni lo hay en la tierra" (no hemp is gathered, nor is there any in the land), and rope was made from maguey fibre "beneficiada como cáñamo" (processed like hemp).[11]: 400, 428 At Pamplona, about 1625, hemp "aún no ha tenido suerte de entrar en estas tierras" (has not yet had the fortune to enter these lands).[12] In 1789 Francisco Silvestre, a former secretary of the viceroyalty, wrote that hemp and flax would do well in the cold lands around Santa Fe if their working were known, but that "Del Lino hay semilla; del Cáñamo falta" (there is flax seed; hemp seed is lacking): the hemp seed brought by the director of the gunpowder works had arrived spoiled.[13] The historian of crops Víctor Manuel Patiño concluded that hemp "no tuvo predicamento en América equinoccial" (found no favour in equinoctial America).[14]: 394–396 The historian Manuel Díaz-Ordóñez, citing the description of Tunja, finds hemp absent from New Granada.[15]: 66
An imported medicine and a port-city intoxicant (1870s–1965)
In the 1870s cannabis appeared in the Colombian press as a foreign medicine. In 1876 and 1877 the Medellín Boletín Industrial carried a table of the products of the Paris firm Grimault y Cía., among them "cigarrillos indios de cannabis índica" for asthma and breathlessness, sold in "todas las droguerías y boticas" (all drugstores and pharmacies).[16] Law 11 of 1920, on the import and sale of habit-forming drugs, put cannabis indica among the substances that could be sold only on a written prescription.[17]
Use before the ban
The authorities knew of marijuana plots in 1925, and of the plant's use by sailors, dockworkers and prostitutes in the ports.[1]: 209 An informant of the historian Lina Britto remembered that in his adolescence in the 1930s the best marijuana was to be had in Ciénaga. In his account sailors on the ships that carried sugar from Cuba to the banana district brought it with them, and with seed promoted by merchants of Barranquilla this started the first crops in the Sierra Nevada.[2]: 72 The historian Eduardo Sáenz Rovner, working from the files of Colombia's foreign and interior ministries and of the United States narcotics bureau, argues that an important domestic market existed before the American demand of the late 1960s, and that marijuana "ya tenía una larga historia en Colombia, antes de cualquier influencia norteamericana" (already had a long history in Colombia, before any American influence).[1]: 207–208 He finds it grown and smoked from the 1930s, mostly by poor people, on the coast and inland.[18]: 103
The government's report on the drug trade for 1940 stated that on the Caribbean coast marijuana cigarettes were sold mostly in brothels and low haunts, and at the stalls that sold fried food (fritangas) and cane drink (guarapo).[1]: 210 In Barranquilla, where the plant was grown in Atlántico and in neighbouring Magdalena, the archives hold about 60 cases of possession, sale and growing between 1940 and 1944.[1]: 211 In May 1941 the police found ten plants growing at a house in the city.[19]: 85 In March 1940 the government reported to the League of Nations that sailors of a shipping line were handing out marijuana cigarettes in the prostitution quarter of Buenaventura, the Pacific port.[19]: 84 Inland, two men were caught in Manizales in the early 1940s with three pounds of marijuana that had apparently been grown in the yard of a house in Pereira.[1]: 212
Prohibition
Resolution 645 of 18 September 1939 of the Ministry of Labour, Health and Social Welfare banned the growing of marijuana outright, ordered existing plantations destroyed and made offenders liable to the penalties of the Penal Code for illegal traffic in drugs.[1]: 209[20] It gave growers 60 days to destroy their plants.[19]: 83 A film on "los estragos causados por la cannabis índica" (the ravages of Indian hemp) was shown in several towns, and in February 1940 the government reported that its campaign had succeeded, pointing to a cigarette price of one peso fifty centavos.[1]: 210 A United States naval officer reported in 1945 that a Mexican ship, the Hidalgo, had made three voyages to Barranquilla in six months with "enormes cantidades" (enormous quantities) of marijuana and seed for planting, and that a cigarette now cost ten centavos.[1]: 212
A law of 1946 that the Barranquilla senator Néstor Consuegra put before Congress, and which took his name, raised the penalties for selling and using marijuana, treating both as crimes against public health, and denied bail to those convicted.[1]: 212[19]: 83 The two historians date the next measure differently. In Britto's account, by Decree 896 of 1947 President Mariano Ospina Pérez penalised the growing, distribution and sale of coca and marijuana;[2]: 74 Sáenz Rovner gives a decree of 1949 that prohibited "el cultivo y comercio de la marihuana" (the growing of and trade in marijuana) throughout the country.[1]: 212–213 Both decrees exist. Decree 896 of 1947 dealt mainly with the payment of farm wages in coca leaf, and its third article prohibited the growing of coca and of "cannabis sativa (marihuana)". The opposition it met forced the government to suspend it.[21] Decree 923 of 4 April 1949 prohibited the growing of and trade in marijuana alone, ordered the plants destroyed and set prison terms of six months to five years under Law 45 of 1946.[20] Decree 1858 of 1951 classed those who grew, dealt in or used marijuana as maleantes (malefactors), and Decree 0014 of 1955, under Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, increased the sentences for growing, trading and using it.[2]: 74[1]: 213 The number of people in prison for marijuana offences rose from 53 in 1956 to 597 in 1963.[2]: 74
A story told by several writers holds that the Ospina Pérez government imported hemp seed for the textile industry and that the seed served the marijuana trade instead. The writer Alonso Salazar stated that the seed proved poor for fibre "pero excelentes para el consumo como alucinógeno" (but excellent for use as a hallucinogen).[22] Darío Betancourt and Martha Luz García write that marijuana spread mainly with imports of cáñamo índico (Indian hemp) brought into the country in 1947 to improve the textile industry.[23]: 225 Sáenz Rovner repeats the import from Salazar.[1]: 220–221 Britto, citing Arango and Child, calls the spread of the seed into the crops of the Sierra Nevada and the Cauca valley a rumour: "I found no evidence to prove or disprove this theory."[2]: 73–74
The first exports
A confidential government report of 1952 stated that Santa Marta had become an important source of marijuana sent to the ports of Florida on banana ships. According to the report, a man known as "T el T" grew the plant on a farm near the city, supplied the brothels and was the main exporter.[1]: 213–214 In 1957 Colombian sailors were reported to have taken marijuana to New Orleans aboard a ship of the national merchant fleet.[1]: 214 The Colombian delegates to an inter-American meeting on narcotics control in Rio de Janeiro in 1961 reported, from a secret-police survey, that marijuana was grown in Valle del Cauca, Caldas and Antioquia, with large plots hidden in the cane fields of the sugar mills near Cali. They added crops in Huila, in Magdalena on the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, and in Cauca, Tolima and Cundinamarca.[1]: 214–215 The governorship of Caldas began a campaign against the plant in 1961, offering rewards of up to 500 pesos for reports of plantations, and in 1966 a senior official put the number of users in the country at 50,000 or more.[1]: 215–216 In February 1968 the police found a three-hectare plantation on a farm in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.[1]: 218
The export boom (late 1960s–1985)
In 1969 drought in Mexico and the first American campaigns on the Mexican border caused a "marijuana famine" in the United States. Smugglers in at least five regions of Colombia were then adding small amounts of marijuana to cargoes of coffee bound north.[2]: 77 By 1972 the first crops grown only for export had appeared on the Guajira side of the Sierra Nevada, financed by American and Colombian investors and worked by peasants who had fled La Violencia in the Andean interior.[4]: 166 A report of the National Police of January 1973 listed five marijuana regions: the eastern lowlands, Urabá, the Sierra Nevada with La Guajira, the coffee region from Caldas to Huila, and the Venezuelan border in Santander, Boyacá and Arauca.[2]: ch. 5, n. 32 The Drug Enforcement Administration estimated that Colombia supplied 70 per cent of the marijuana that entered the United States in 1978.[2]: 255
The boom also reached the plains east of the Andes. In the mid-1970s marijuana was grown at Vistahermosa, in Meta, close to the Serranía de La Macarena national park; prices collapsed in 1977, and from about 1978 coca took the place of the plantations.[24]: 204 In the Serranía del Perijá, on the border with Venezuela, the crop was established by the end of the 1970s.[25]: 14
At home the plant kept a medical following. In December 1972 the head of laboratories of the judicial police's criminology department in Medellín brought a criminal complaint for slander against the Academia de Medicina de Antioquia, which had declared that "la marihuana no cura" (marijuana does not cure). He gave the press a list of doctors who, he said, had prescribed a "tintura de marihuana" (marijuana tincture) for rheumatoid arthritis and asthma.[26] An agronomy thesis of 1976 at the Universidad Tecnológica del Magdalena, citing the press, reports the academy's condemnation of the use of marijuana in Medellín "en tratamientos contra la artritis y el asma" (in treatments for arthritis and asthma).[27]: 37
Britto dates the decline of the export trade to the militarisation of the growing region from 1978, which in her account set the traffickers against one another and made the business costly; by the mid-1980s it had collapsed.[2]: 3, 16 In 1985 Mexico overtook Colombia as a source of marijuana for the United States.[28]: 15
Eradication and spraying (1978–1990)
Decree 2144 of 1978, one of the security statutes of President Julio César Turbay, set up controls over the Sierra Nevada and the Guajira peninsula to suppress the growing and transport of marijuana. The army campaign that followed began on 1 November 1978 as a joint initiative with the administration of Jimmy Carter, aimed at the two peninsulas where the trade began and ended, the Guajira and Florida.[4]: 160, 171 Turbay's memoirs count 10,217 hectares of crops destroyed and about 2.6 million kilograms of marijuana seized in its first eight months; Britto argues that such figures became a political football on which American aid depended.[4]: 171 The army was later withdrawn amid allegations of corruption in its ranks,[29]: 18 and in 1980 a specialised narcotics police took over the watch on La Guajira and Magdalena.[30]
Colombia resisted American calls to spray its marijuana from the air until December 1983, when it approved limited trials of herbicides. After the assassination of the justice minister, Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, in April 1984 the government decided on a spraying campaign in the north-coast region,[5]: 11 and it chose glyphosate over paraquat.[31] The airwing of the National Police flew the spray helicopters, which the United States supplied, from July 1984.[29]: 32 The figures for the area destroyed do not agree. The United States intelligence community estimated about 6,000 hectares in 1985 and 9,700 in 1986;[28]: 17 the General Accounting Office reported more than 33,000 hectares from July 1984 through 1987, and found no formal check on the areas reported as sprayed.[29]: 32, 34
Growers moved their fields. Officials of the environmental agency INDERENA who flew over the Sierra Nevada in December 1986 found clearings for marijuana at 2,100 metres in the Frío valley, inside the national park.[32] Spray pilots reported that the average field had shrunk from about 1.3 hectares to about 0.4. Growers mixed marijuana with food crops and planted beyond the traditional areas, and net cultivation in the country rose by more than 150 per cent between 1985 and 1987.[29]: 32 By 1989 United States intelligence judged the traditional growing areas of the north virtually free of cannabis, with small plots left in the south-west.[33]: 68
Growing for the home market (1990–2016)
In 1990 Colombia was only a minor source of the marijuana sold in the United States. Growing in the Sierra Nevada and the Perijá was much reduced, and other growing areas lay in Nariño, Putumayo, Valle del Cauca and Cauca.[34]: 35 The Colombian estimate for 1992 was 2,000 hectares, but the DEA judged that cultivation could have reached 14,000. New fields had been planted that year on the south-eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada and on the Colombian side of the Perijá.[35]: 33 Seizures of seed and packed marijuana in Cauca, Valle del Cauca and Huila pointed to new activity in those departments.[36]: 108 In June 1993 the new head of the anti-narcotics police warned of a rise in growing in the Sierra Nevada, the Perijá and Caquetá, by the groups that had exported marijuana in the 1970s.[37] Some of the crop was processed into hashish oil,[38]: 105 and in 1993 traffickers tried to ship 17.9 tonnes of marijuana to the Netherlands.[35]: 33
From 1993 to 1999 the State Department's tables gave about 5,000 hectares of cannabis a year, with the note that the reported cultivation "has not been confirmed by USG survey".[39] The department attributed what it called a steady resurgence to the low priority the overstretched anti-narcotics police gave to eradicating marijuana,[40] and by 2000 it judged the remaining cultivation minor.[41] Seizures fell from 235 tonnes in 1996 to 65 tonnes in 1999.[39] The economist Francisco Thoumi, summarising studies sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme, wrote that marijuana growing had declined in the 1980s and risen again in the 1990s, and that most of the marijuana grown in Colombia probably went to the domestic market.[42]: 34–35 Ricardo Vargas put the number of families living from marijuana at about 5,000, against 30,000 for the opium poppy.[43]: 55
Growing spread through the Andean departments and their edges. In the Provincia de Ocaña, in Norte de Santander, the first marijuana eradicated was four hectares in Ocaña in 1998,[44]: 15, 47 and the police found plantations in rural Ocaña and Ábrego in 2014 and 2015.[45][46] In the Ariari, in Meta, the army destroyed a field at Lejanías in 2016 that held three kinds, which the press called "creepy", "punto rojo" and the traditional plant; the police eradicated 12 hectares there in 2017.[47][48] In southern Tolima the army destroyed plantations in Ataco, Chaparral and Planadas between 2016 and 2020.[49][50]
Northern Cauca became the centre of the crop. Colombia's truth commission dates the first crops in Corinto and Caloto to the 1950s, when the first peasant growers were arrested;[3]: 73 a seed dealer interviewed in Toribío in 2018 said that marijuana reached Corinto only around 1980.[51]: 58 Anthony Henman, who did fieldwork in Cauca in the 1970s, cites a São Paulo newspaper of August 1975 that reported a plantation of a million plants on 1,530 hectares in the zone of army and guerrilla operations around Corinto.[52]: 145 Prosecution cut production sharply in the 1980s, when coca and the opium poppy replaced cannabis as sources of income.[53]: 3 Communities told the peace research institute Indepaz that from 2004 growers from outside the region set up large plantations and greenhouses inside the indigenous reserves without the consent of their authorities, each with up to 40,000 plants.[54]: 19–20 In 2011 the news site InSight Crime reported a police estimate, cited by El Tiempo, that up to 95 per cent of the country's production of marijuana moved through Cauca.[55] From about 2010 the north of Cauca was one of the main centres of a revival of marijuana growing, under lights and in the open, and the FARC guerrilla controlled the business there until it demobilised in 2016.[3]: 162–163 The German-Colombian peace institute CAPAZ links the expansion of the early 2010s to the arrival of a type called creepy.[53]: 3
Law and the licensed industry (1986–2026)
Colombia acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs on 3 March 1975 and to the Convention on Psychotropic Substances on 12 May 1981.[56][57] Law 30 of 1986, the Estatuto Nacional de Estupefacientes, defined a plantation as more than 20 plants from which dependence-producing drugs can be extracted, and set the personal dose of marijuana at 20 grams.[6][7] Colombia signed the 1988 United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances on 20 December 1988 and ratified it on 10 June 1994.[58]
In Sentencia C-221 of 5 May 1994 the Constitutional Court struck down the articles of Law 30 that punished the carrying and use of a personal dose, holding that to make drug use an offence violated the right to the free development of personality.[7] A constitutional amendment of 2009 prohibited carrying and using narcotic substances except on medical prescription, with administrative measures in place of criminal penalties.[59] In the reading of the legal research centre Dejusticia, the Court later held that neither the amendment nor a 2011 change to the Penal Code made the personal dose a crime.[60][61]
Decree 2467 of 22 December 2015 set up licences for growing cannabis, holding seed and making and exporting derivatives for medical and scientific purposes,[8] and Law 1787 of 6 July 2016 gave that regime a statute.[62] Decree 811 of 2021 replaced the regulations. They cover medical cannabis and also seed, grain and non-psychoactive derivatives for industrial, horticultural and food use, and they exempt from licensing the growing of up to 20 plants by a natural person for personal use.[63] Law 2204 of 2022 gave hemp for fibre and grain, with 0.3 per cent THC or less, a framework of its own.[64] An amendment to the Constitution to regulate adult use passed the first of its two rounds in Congress in 2022.[65] Decree 1138 of 2025 admitted the cannabis flower among the finished products allowed for medical use and let licence holders sell to the Colombian medical market besides exporting.[66]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 Sáenz Rovner, Eduardo (2007). "La "prehistoria" de la marihuana en Colombia: consumo y cultivos entre los años 30 y 60" (PDF). Cuadernos de Economía (in español). XXVI (47): 205–222.
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 Britto, Lina (2020). Marijuana Boom: The Rise and Fall of Colombia's First Drug Paradise. Oakland: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-32547-0.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Comisión para el Esclarecimiento de la Verdad, la Convivencia y la No Repetición (August 2022). Colombia adentro: relatos territoriales sobre el conflicto armado. Valle y norte del Cauca (PDF). Hay futuro si hay verdad: Informe Final, tomo 11, vol. 12 (in español). Bogotá: Comisión de la Verdad. ISBN 978-628-7590-38-0. Retrieved 20 October 2026 – via Biblioteca Hegoa.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Britto, Lina (2010). "A Trafficker's Paradise: The "War On Drugs" and the New Cold War in Colombia". Contemporánea: Historia y problemas del siglo XX. 1 (1): 159–177. ISSN 1688-7638.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control, U.S. House of Representatives (1986). Latin American Study Missions Concerning International Narcotics Problems (August 3–19, 1985) (PDF) (Committee print). Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office. SCNAC-99-2-1. Retrieved 19 October 2026.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Por la cual se adopta el Estatuto Nacional de Estupefacientes y se dictan otras disposiciones(Ley No. 30), 31 January 1986, art. 2, lit. ñ (Diario Oficial No. 37.335, 5 February 1986).Colombia.Retrieved 15 October 2026.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Sentencia C-221/94. Corte Constitucional de Colombia (5 May 1994). Expediente D-429; resolutive part, arts. 51 and 87 of Ley 30 de 1986. Retrieved 15 October 2026.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Por el cual se reglamentan los aspectos de que tratan los artículos 3, 5, 6 y 8 de la Ley 30 de 1986(Decreto No. 2467), 22 December 2015, arts. 1 and 3 (Diario Oficial No. 49.734, 22 December 2015).Colombia, Ministerio de Salud y Protección Social.Retrieved 15 October 2026.
- ↑ "Real Cédula al marqués de Guadalcázar, virrey del Perú, para que informe si en aquellas provincias hay sitios a propósito para sembrar cáñamo y fabricar jarcia para navíos". PARES: Portal de Archivos Españoles (in español). Ministerio de Cultura. 23 April 1626. Archivo General de Indias, INDIFERENTE,429,L.37,F.83-83V. Retrieved 2 November 2026.
- ↑ "Carta de Juan de Borja, presidente de la Audiencia de Santa Fe". PARES: Portal de Archivos Españoles (in español). Ministerio de Cultura. 30 June 1627. Archivo General de Indias, SANTA_FE,20,R.7,N.146. Retrieved 2 November 2026.
- ↑ Torres de Mendoza, Luis, ed. (1868). "Descripción de la ciudad de Tunja". Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de América y Oceanía (in español). Vol. 9. Madrid. pp. 393–447 – via Google Books.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ↑ Simón, Pedro (1892) [c. 1627]. Noticias historiales de las conquistas de Tierra Firme en las Indias Occidentales (in español). Vol. 3. Bogotá: Casa editorial de Medardo Rivas. p. 90 – via Wikimedia Commons.
- ↑ Silvestre, Francisco (1888) [1789]. "Descripción del Reyno de Santa Fe de Bogotá, escrita en 1789". Anales de la Instrucción Pública en los Estados Unidos de Colombia (in español). 13. Bogotá: 74, 157 – via Banco de la República.
- ↑ Patiño, Víctor Manuel (1969). Plantas cultivadas y animales domésticos en América equinoccial (in español). Vol. IV: Plantas introducidas. Cali: Imprenta Departamental.
- ↑ Díaz-Ordóñez, Manuel (2022). "European Imperialism, War, Strategic Commodities and Ecological Limits: The Diffusion of Hemp in Spanish South America and Its Ghost Fibers". In Yun-Casalilla, Bartolomé; Berti, Ilaria; Svriz-Wucherer, Omar (eds.). American Globalization, 1492–1850: Trans-Cultural Consumption in Spanish Latin America. Routledge. pp. 56–77. doi:10.4324/9781003168058-5.
- ↑ "Medicamentos exclusivos de la Casa Grimault y Cía". Boletín Industrial (Advertisement) (in español). No. 167. Medellín. 21 December 1876. p. 4. Retrieved 2 November 2026 – via Biblioteca Digital Banrepcultural.
- ↑ Sobre importación y venta de drogas que formen hábito pernicioso(Ley No. 11), 15 September 1920, art. 1 (Diario Oficial No. 17.322, 20 September 1920).Colombia.Retrieved 1 November 2026.
- ↑ Sáenz Rovner, Eduardo (2009). "Ensayo sobre la historia del tráfico de drogas psicoactivas en Colombia entre los años 30 y 50". Iberoamericana (in español). IX (35): 93–104. doi:10.18441/ibam.9.2009.35.93-104.
- ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 19.3 Sáenz Rovner, Eduardo (1996). "La prehistoria del narcotráfico en Colombia. Serie documental: desde la Gran Depresión hasta la Revolución Cubana". Innovar (in español) (8): 65–92.
- ↑ 20.0 20.1 Secretary-General of the United Nations (10 July 1949). Laws and regulations communicated in compliance with the terms of the Convention for Limiting the Manufacture and Regulating the Distribution of Narcotic Drugs of 13 July 1931 as amended by the Protocol of 11 December 1946: Colombia, 1949 (PDF) (Report). E/NL.1949/35. Retrieved 1 November 2026 – via United Nations Digital Library.
- ↑ "The coca-leaf problem in Colombia". Bulletin on Narcotics (2). United Nations. 1952. Retrieved 1 November 2026.
- ↑ Salazar, Alonso (January 1998). La cola del lagarto (in español). Medellín: Corporación Región. ISBN 958-96265-5-6.
- ↑ Betancourt, Darío; García, Martha Luz (1994). Contrabandistas, marimberos y mafiosos: historia social de la mafia colombiana (1965–1992) (in español). Bogotá: TM Editores. ISBN 958-601-481-9.
- ↑ Torres, María Clara (September–December 2021). "Arroz y coca: una modernización desigual y violenta en el Ariari, Colombia, 1950-1990". Análisis Político (in español). 34 (103): 193–224. doi:10.15446/anpol.v34n103.102174.
- ↑ Comisión para el Esclarecimiento de la Verdad, la Convivencia y la No Repetición (2022). Caso «Parcelaciones del Cesar: tierras campesinas tiznadas por el conflicto» (PDF) (Report) (in español). Comisión de la Verdad. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ González Restrepo, Jaime (3 December 1972). "Denuncia contra la Academia de Medicina". El Tiempo (in español). Bogotá. p. 8-A. Retrieved 2 November 2026 – via Google News Archive.
- ↑ Ceballos C., Aníbal S. (1976). Algunos aspectos del cultivo de la marihuana (Cannabis sativa L.) (Tesis de grado (Ingeniero Agrónomo)). Santa Marta: Universidad Tecnológica del Magdalena. hdl:20.500.14923/2103.
- ↑ 28.0 28.1 National Narcotics Intelligence Consumers Committee (June 1987). The NNICC Report 1985–1986: The Supply of Illicit Drugs to the United States from Foreign and Domestic Sources in 1985 and 1986 (with Near Term Projections) (PDF) (Report) – via National Criminal Justice Reference Service.
- ↑ 29.0 29.1 29.2 29.3 U.S. General Accounting Office (November 1988). Drug Control: U.S.-Supported Efforts in Colombia and Bolivia (PDF) (Report to the Congress). Washington. GAO/NSIAD-89-24. Retrieved 21 October 2026.
- ↑ "Bonanza marimbera, adios!". Semana (in español). 1 November 1982. Retrieved 30 October 2026.
- ↑ Ledford, Joey (11 July 1984). "Colombia's decision to spray its marijuana with the herbicide..." UPI Archives. United Press International. Retrieved 21 October 2026.
- ↑ Barbosa, Cesar; Rodríguez, Guillermo; Avellaneda, Alfonso (1986). Estudios ambientales en la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta afectada por cultivos de marihuana y fumigación con glifosato (Informe de comisión) (in español). Bogotá: INDERENA. Retrieved 19 October 2026 – via Mama Coca.
- ↑ National Narcotics Intelligence Consumers Committee (June 1990). The NNICC Report 1989: The Supply of Illicit Drugs to the United States (PDF) (Report). Retrieved 21 October 2026 – via National Criminal Justice Reference Service.
- ↑ National Narcotics Intelligence Consumers Committee (June 1991). The NNICC Report 1990: The Supply of Illicit Drugs to the United States (PDF) (Report). Retrieved 30 October 2026 – via National Criminal Justice Reference Service.
- ↑ 35.0 35.1 National Narcotics Intelligence Consumers Committee (September 1993). The NNICC Report 1992: The Supply of Illicit Drugs to the United States (PDF) (Report) – via National Criminal Justice Reference Service.
- ↑ International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (Report). United States Department of State. 1993. Retrieved 2 November 2026 – via HathiTrust.
- ↑ "Prevén nueva bonanza marimbera". El Tiempo (in español). 7 June 1993. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (Report). United States Department of State. 1994. Retrieved 2 November 2026 – via HathiTrust.
- ↑ 39.0 39.1 Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (March 2000). "South America: Colombia". International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, 1999 (Report). United States Department of State. Retrieved 2 November 2026.
- ↑ Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. "South America: Colombia". International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, 1996 (Report). United States Department of State. Retrieved 2 November 2026.
- ↑ Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (1 March 2001). "South America: Colombia". International Narcotics Control Strategy Report 2000 (Report). United States Department of State. Retrieved 2 November 2026.
- ↑ Thoumi, Francisco E. (1997). "Las drogas ilegales en los países andinos: resultados de estudios recientes patrocinados por el PNUD". In Hopenhayn, Martín (ed.). La grieta de las drogas: desintegración social y políticas públicas en América Latina (in español). Santiago de Chile: CEPAL. pp. 33–50. hdl:11362/2163.
- ↑ Vargas M., Ricardo (1997). "Drogas en Colombia: los efectos de una economía gangsteril". In Hopenhayn, Martín (ed.). La grieta de las drogas: desintegración social y políticas públicas en América Latina (in español). Santiago de Chile: CEPAL. hdl:11362/2163.
- ↑ Ministerio de Justicia y del Derecho; Oficina de las Naciones Unidas contra la Droga y el Delito (December 2016). Caracterización regional de la problemática asociada a las drogas ilícitas en el departamento de Norte de Santander (PDF) (Report) (in español). Bogotá: Ministerio de Justicia y del Derecho. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ "En un Bosque Nativo en zona rural descubrimos cultivos de mata de coca y marihuana" (in español). Policía Nacional de Colombia. 8 October 2014. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ "La Policía Nacional descubrió 2.5 hectáreas de matas de marihuana" (in español). Policía Nacional de Colombia. 16 January 2015. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ "En Meta, cultivos de coca dan paso a la marihuana". El Tiempo (in español). 13 January 2016. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ "Avanza "Plan Institucional todos contra el Narcotráfico" en el Meta" (in español). Policía Nacional de Colombia. 30 April 2017. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ "Ejército da duros golpes al narcotráfico en el sur del Tolima". La FM (in español). 23 February 2016. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ "Military Forces and Prosecutor´s Office find marijuana of the residual GAO in Tolima". Comando General de las Fuerzas Militares de Colombia. 21 January 2020. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ Cruz Olivera, Luis Felipe; Pereira Arana, Isabel (November 2021). Laberintos de prohibición y regulación: los grises de la marihuana en Colombia. Colección Dejusticia (in español). Bogotá: Editorial Dejusticia. ISBN 978-958-5597-98-3. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ Henman, Anthony (2019) [1978]. Mama coca (in español). Translated by Gabriel Iriarte; preface by Wade Davis (8th ed.). Popayán: Editorial Universidad del Cauca. ISBN 978-958-732-345-0.
- ↑ 53.0 53.1 Granados, Diana; Rojas, Axel; López, William; Moriones, Germán; Anzola, Sebastián (August 2024). Regular para la paz: recomendaciones para la regulación del cannabis de uso adulto en el norte del Cauca (PDF) (Report). Policy Brief 10-2024 (in español). Bogotá: Instituto Colombo-Alemán para la Paz (CAPAZ). ISSN 2711-0346. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ Espitia Cueca, Carlos Eduardo; Majbub Avendaño, Salomón (March 2024). La economía de la marihuana en el enclave productivo del Norte del Cauca (PDF) (Report) (in español). Instituto de Estudios para el Desarrollo y la Paz (Indepaz). ISSN 1909-0900. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ Pachico, Elyssa (21 June 2011). "Potent Colombian Pot Could Be Big Earner for FARC". InSight Crime. Retrieved 21 October 2026.
- ↑ "Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961". United Nations Treaty Collection. Chapter VI, 15. Retrieved 3 October 2026.
- ↑ "Convention on Psychotropic Substances". United Nations Treaty Collection. Chapter VI, 16. Retrieved 3 October 2026.
- ↑ "United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances". United Nations Treaty Collection. Chapter VI, 19. Retrieved 3 October 2026.
- ↑ Por el cual se reforma el artículo 49 de la Constitución Política(Acto Legislativo No. 02), 21 December 2009, art. 1 (Diario Oficial No. 47.570, 21 December 2009).Colombia.Retrieved 1 November 2026.
- ↑ Pereira Arana, Isabel; Pérez, Sergio (6 May 2024). "Avances y paradojas: 30 años de la despenalización del uso y porte personal de drogas" (in español). Dejusticia. Retrieved 15 October 2026.
- ↑ Sentencia C-491/12. Corte Constitucional de Colombia (28 June 2012). Expedientes D-8834 and D-8842 (acumulados); resolutive part. Retrieved 1 November 2026.
- ↑ Por medio de la cual se reglamenta el Acto Legislativo 02 de 2009(Ley No. 1787), 6 July 2016, arts. 1 and 3 (Diario Oficial No. 49.926, 6 July 2016).Colombia.Retrieved 15 October 2026.
- ↑ Por el cual se sustituye el Título 11 de la Parte 8 del Libro 2 del Decreto 780 de 2016, Único Reglamentario del Sector Salud y Protección Social, en relación con el acceso seguro e informado al uso del cannabis y de la planta de cannabis(Decreto No. 811), 23 July 2021, arts. 2.8.11.1.1, 2.8.11.1.3 (num. 7) and 2.8.11.2.1.2 (par.) (Diario Oficial No. 51.744, 23 July 2021).Colombia, Ministerio de Salud y Protección Social.Retrieved 15 October 2026.
- ↑ Por la cual se crea el marco legal para el uso industrial y científico del cáñamo en Colombia y se dictan otras disposiciones(Ley No. 2204), 10 May 2022, arts. 1 and 2 (Diario Oficial No. 52.030, 10 May 2022).Colombia.Retrieved 15 October 2026.
- ↑ Por el cual se ordena la publicación del Proyecto de Acto Legislativo No. 033 de 2022 Senado - 002 de 2022 Cámara «Por medio del cual se modifica el artículo 49 de la Constitución Política de Colombia, se regulariza el cannabis de uso adulto y se dictan otras disposiciones» (Primera Vuelta)(Decreto No. 029), 12 January 2023, considerandos; art. 1.Colombia.Retrieved 1 November 2026.
- ↑ Por medio del cual se modifica parcialmente el Título 11 de la Parte 8 del Libro 2 del Decreto 780 de 2016, Único Reglamentario del Sector Salud y Protección Social, en relación con el acceso seguro e informado al uso del cannabis y de la planta de cannabis(Decreto No. 1138), 27 October 2025, arts. 1, 3, 4, 13, 16 and 17.Colombia, Ministerio de Salud y Protección Social.Retrieved 15 October 2026.